Ray Bradbury, 91

Ray Bradbury, 91, one of the most popular fantasy writers of the 20th century, died yesterday (June 5). He began writing for sci-fi andmystery magazines in the 1930s; his first short-story collection was published in 1947. Many of his works have been adapted for the movies and TV over the years: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, I Sing the Body Electric, The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, and others. Bradbury objected to being called a science-fiction writer: “I’ve only done one science fiction book and that’s Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy.”—Eve Golden